Offer: $20 Million for Former ISA Site

In 2004, the Loudoun Board of Supervisors purchased a 101.3-acre site at the corner of Waxpool Road and Farmwell Road for $13.5 million, a deal that was criticized by many but may pay off nonetheless.

A company that wants to construct a 750,000-square-foot data center has offered $20 million for 75.4 acres of the site. That’s what remains after carving out 7.3 acres for the existing baseball fields and another 18.6 acres for area now under lease by Loudoun County Public Schools, which has planned an elementary school there.

Residents can weigh in on the proposal during a public hearing that starts at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Loudoun County Government Building in Leesburg. The item is part of the board’s monthly public hearing agenda. The board could suspend the rules and vote on the offer after Tuesday’s hearing, or, send the item to a future board meeting for action.

The offer represents roughly double the price the county paid for the land on a per-acre basis: $265,261 per acre compared with the $133,267 per acre paid when the land was purchased. The county assessor set the property at $18.8 million in January ($149,137 per acre), while an April 2012 appraisal valued the land at $24.3 million ($322,281 per acre).

In the long term, the biggest benefit could be returning the property to the tax roles, which would yield more that $200,000 per year undeveloped and potentially in the range of $6 million to $16 million per year when initially developed.

The county’s Capital Improvement Plan currently includes $17 million gained from the anticipated sale of the land.

For many years, the site was commonly referred to as the ISA site because the Islamic Saudi Academy owned it and sold it to the county.